


Winter Rain

by Dewdropzz



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Childhod, Christmas, Fantasy, Gen, Island - Freeform, OCs - Freeform, Obsession, Snow, Tragedy, frost - Freeform, santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5541857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dewdropzz/pseuds/Dewdropzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Cata, an eight year old girl from Antigua, wants for Christmas is snow. Jack Frost can grant her Christmas wish. But will he? Can the laws of nature be broken without consequence, or should some things be left the way they are?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Rain

There was a spirit of the winter, with the appearance of a man, and the heart of a child. The spirit was a guardian — a guardian of childhood. His centre was fun, and the fun that he put into the world was in the form of snow; beautiful frozen water droplets with enchanting properties.

His name was Jack Frost, and children all over the Northern Hemisphere knew his name. During the cold months of winter, he could be seen riding the north wind through their cities and towns, over country hilltops and urban rooftops, sprinkling his magical ice crystals on the world. In the warmer months, he was known to summer in the North Pole with a fellow guardian. Jack Frost was not fond of above zero temperatures, and he did his best to avoid them whenever he could. He was not meant for warm climates — well, he supposed at one time he may not have minded them so much, but since he had become Jack Frost, he and heat had not been on friendly terms.

This was of no consequence, as Jack did not work in the summertime, and had no business in the warmer parts of the earth. If it didn't snow there, he didn't go there. It was unnatural for it to snow in most of the Southern Hemisphere, and his wintry magic could not defy the laws of nature. Usually this didn't bother him.

But sometimes, it did.

On the pages of Cata's book there was something magnificent: something sparkly and white she had never seen before. When she held the book under the light, the illustrations would glisten like the ocean outside her bedroom window. The pages felt rough to the touch because of the glitter that made them that way, but the words in the story described the stuff as being soft — soft, and cold, and meltable when it landed on your tongue. It fell from the sky like rain, and piled up on the ground when it was cold enough, covering the world in an alabaster blanket, and making everything glimmer and shine with an almost ethereal beauty. And to the children who experienced this winter miracle, its first fall was a sure sign that Santa Claus would soon be on his way.

Santa had brought Cata this wondrous storybook last year for Christmas, and now that the Christmas season had come 'round again, Cata would ask her mother to read it to her every night before she went to bed. No matter how many times she had heard the simple tale told, the words and the pictures always made Cata's eyes open wide with wonder, as if the book cast a beautiful, blissful spell over her every time it was opened, and opened again. The white substance that the pages shimmered with, Cata learned, was called snow, and it was as fascinating to Cata as the illustrations of Santa Claus in the night sky, or perhaps more so. Santa came to her and her brothers every Christmas, but snow she had never once seen in her life.

Cata was eight years old. She was going to be nine in January. She lived on the island of Antigua in the West Indies, in a nice house that was very close to the beach. She lived with her mom and dad, her big brother Philip, and her little brother Juan. She liked living on an island, but ever since she had started school at age six, and began to learn about the four seasons that other places on earth had, she had wondered why they in the Caribbean didn't have them as well.

"Mama, why doesn't it snow here?" Cata asked one night, after her mother had read the very last line on the very last page, for the very last time before bed.

"It's not cold enough to snow here." her mother replied as she tucked her in, all right and tight. "We're lucky it's warm here all year round. People come to tropical places like this to escape the cold."

"But why do they want to escape?" Cata questioned, with deep brown eyes full of confusion. "Snow is so beautiful. They're the lucky ones, Mama, the people who get to see it."

"And they think that we're the lucky ones, because we have the ocean, and palm trees, and summer twelve months a year. It all depends on how you look at it." Her mother kissed her on the forehead, and shut the light before she left the room, leaving Cata hanging on these words. She didn't believe it was true that Antigua didn't have winter. It did indeed have winter, in fact it was winter right now.

Winter in the Caribbean meant cooler temperatures, and lots of rain.

Her mother said where they lived wasn't cold enough for snow, but Cata didn't understand how this was possible. It was known to go down to 24°C in December! Only tourists swam in the ocean when it was that cold, and she and her brothers weren't allowed to go outside without a sweater. It was on one of such brisk afternoons one month before Christmas, that Cata said to herself:

"Maybe the only reason people can't see snow here is because they don't believe in it, like how Santa doesn't come to kids who don't believe."

But Cata did believe in snow. She believed in it, and she wished with all her heart that she could see it, and play in it like the kids in northern countries did.

And so began Cata's quest to find snow. Every day after school she would walk up and down the beach near her home, looking for 'snow signs', any traces of the glimmering white stuff. The sky in Antiguan December was oftentimes grey, foretelling of the rain that spattered the sand fifty percent of the month. The palm leaves danced to stay warm in the cool, wet breeze, and donning a big sweater, Cata would pad along the shore, singing a rhyme to no one but herself and the leaden sky.

"Winter snow, so cold and clear,

North wind blow across the sea,

The Christmas gift I want this year,

Rain clouds, please bring snow to me."

The eight-year-old would put a tune to this rhyme, but the tune would change a little every time, perhaps to break up the monotony of the day, or perhaps because she didn't quite remember how it went the last time. Sometimes Cata would walk by herself, or sometimes she would bring friends along. Often she would bring her younger brother, Juan, with her on her investigations. Juan was four, and Cata had talked about snow so much at home that she had made Juan almost as eager to find the 'winter fluff' as she was.

"Um, what does snow, um, look like?" the little boy would ask as they treaded the dunes, side by side.

"It looks like sand, remember?" Cata would answer. "But it's white, and fluffier-looking."

"And it only comes in, um, the winter, right?" he would want his sister to reiterate, just so he could say: "It's winter fluff!" And he would laugh. Cata didn't know why the four-year-old thought this was funny, even the first time. But she would always laugh along with him, because that's what a good big sister did. And maybe if she was good, Santa would bring her snow for Christmas.

And they would giggle, and they would search, and they would bring the storybook with them, for reference. On one page there were icicles hanging delicately from the trees. Cata and Juan inspected the palm trees for the beautiful, icy prisms, to no avail. On another page there were snowmen, all lined up like a friendly army, smiling at Santa Claus as he flew overhead. Cata didn't expect to find snowmen on the beach, but sometimes she and her brother would take a break from their searching and build 'sandmen' instead, though they never turned out looking anything like the snowmen in the book.

"Um, our people look different." Juan observed, as they stood back to admire their work. Sand refused to be rolled into spheres for the round heads and bodies snowmen had, and the oval pails the siblings used made the sculptures look a bit deformed. But they were fun to make, anyway.

After two full weeks of searching yielded no results, however, Juan was beginning to lose faith. Their elder brother Philip was twelve years old, and he had learned about weather and climate, and the different regions of the earth in school. He made Juan skeptical.

"We'll never find snow because, um, it's too warm here. It's in-pobable." he told Cata one day when she asked if he would come searching with her.

"Did Philip tell you that?" Cata asked, knowing full well the answer.

"Mm-hm."

It seemed the spell of the snow had been broken over Juan. He had not seen it yet, and even in his four-year-old heart he had begun to doubt that he ever would. It was now two weeks before Christmas, and there were many other fun and important things he could have been doing besides looking for snow. Someone needed to watch Daddy as he put up the lights, to make sure he hung them just right. All Mama's baking needed to be taste-tested, the tree could always use more ornaments, and it was fourteen days until Christmas and he hadn't even written his list to Santa!

Cata should have been doing all these things too, but she allowed herself no time to. Even if her family didn't think snow could fall in Antigua, she still refused to give up her quest. She decided to broaden her scope, and search not only on the beach, but in town as well. She kept her eyes peeled wherever she'd go; to school, to her dance class, out Christmas shopping with her mom. It was the strangest feeling, but the more she searched and didn't find, the more determined she was to keep looking. The eight-year-old was starting to believe she wouldn't enjoy Christmas without snow. Is Christmas really Christmas without snow? she privately asked herself. She was noticing now for the first time in her life how many holiday songs on the radio mentioned snow. They talked about sleigh rides, snowmen, and winter wonderlands. And she knew that 'winter wonderland' didn't refer to the grey beach she walked day after day, under a dreary sky. She couldn't remember a December when it had rained more than this one.

The people must have wondered, seeing the little girl in the oversized sweater wandering up and down the shoreline at the same time every day. It wasn't long before the kids in Cata's class caught wind of her endeavours. They began to tease her mercilessly. Their taunting words and icy smiles were colder than Antiguan winters had ever been.

"It doesn't snow in tropical climates, Cata." they would laugh. "Everyone past kindergarten knows that. Maybe you should go back to preschool!"

They called her Cata of the North, and they asked why she lived on an island if she loved the cold so much. Cata of the North didn't know. She wished her family could move someplace where the seasons changed four times a year — and the classmates were nicer. She asked her mother if they could move. She politely suggested that it would be absolutely lovely if they could pack up and move to Canada before the holidays. Her mother chuckled and said that wasn't a realistic request for the time being, so Cata asked her father when he got home from work that night. He said he liked it too much on the island.

Young Cata's hope was ever so slowly diminishing. The days wore on, and still there were no signs of snow or ice anywhere on the beach, on the streets, or even at her school where the kids told mean jokes about her, and made her feel cold all over. The words in her rhyme changed to reflect the desperation she was feeling:

"Winter snow, please just appear...

North wind, if you could only see...

It's all I'm asking for this year.

Please, oh please, bring snow to me."

If Cata knew what the word meant, she would have admit she was obsessed. Her parents were becoming worried. In the last days before Christmas break, her mother would pick her up from school to keep her from going to the beach. When they got home, she would lock the door... Her family tried to distract Cata; to get her mind off the idea of a white Christmas. They celebrated with all the holiday traditions they did every year, but this year Cata's heart just wasn't in it.

It was not good for an eight year old girl to have forlorn hopes, and compulsive desires. She couldn't get those magical frozen water droplets out of her mind. She saw them when she closed her eyes, the way they drifted from the heavens, so much more gracefully than rain. She could feel the impossible sensation of warmth they left in her heart when she dreamed, and she could taste them melt on her tongue, like the sweetest spearmint candy. But the little island girl would always wake from her dreams, and in the morning heaven's snow would always turn to winter rain.

There could be nothing sadder than a winter rain. When the earth should be cloaked in a blanket of white, but instead the world is somber grey, brown, and the most lifeless of greens. The earth in winter was like a dead body, which respectfully should have been laid to rest in a diamond sepulchre of snow, but sometimes, as if by mistake, it would get left out in the open to decay. When this happened, it was a most horrifying sight. In Antigua they were lucky they never had to see their world in this rotting state. In most of the Southern Hemisphere it stayed green all year round, as if half the world had been granted eternal life, eternal youth, eternal summer... and the other half had not.

In the Caribbean, the sun most always shone, creating an atmosphere of everlasting warmth and liveliness. The rolling ocean reflected a turquoise sky, and palm trees and tropical flowers of every colour of the rainbow bloomed and thrived where they could not anywhere else in the world. It's true that people came to this region to escape the dead of the northern winter. Cata and her family were lucky, very lucky indeed. The only thing that made them unlucky, thought the spirit of the winter, was that it didn't snow in the Caribbean. Temperature, and ocean, and rainbow flowers aside, it didn't snow in the Caribbean, and that was all Jack Frost cared about.

Yes, Jack Frost was aware of Cata. She had sung about snow, and he had heard her. This in itself was a strange phenomenon, as people all over the world talked and sang about his frozen water crystals, and he seldom heard them. Perhaps it was not what the little voice said, but where it came from that awakened his magical senses, and allowed him to hear her, regardless of distance. Very few children spoke of snow in the south — at least not with the positivity that this child did.

Jack's curiosity was piqued by the strange little island girl, and as a result he was spending more time in the Southern Hemisphere than he ever had in his three hundred year plus existence. The heat was unimaginable, and the balmy air felt wet and sticky on his skin, and heavy in his lungs — if a spirit had them. If the Caribbean heat could affect humans, it could make a winter spirit want to shrivel up and die. Jack couldn't stand the place... But for some reason, as often as he told himself this would be his final visit, he couldn't help himself from going back.

He had started watching Cata of the North some weeks ago, presumably the first time she had asked the wind and rain clouds to bring snow to her. He was in Chicago, Illinois at the time, when amidst the cacophony of the bustling city, a faint voice met his ears. After listening for a moment, he could tell that the voice was singing, and if he focused very hard he could make out what the song was saying.

"Winter snow, so cold and clear,

North wind blow across the sea,

The Christmas gift I want this year,

Rain clouds, please bring snow to me."

He had already dusted Chicago with his wintry magic, and therefore he knew the voice couldn't have belonged to anyone in town. It wasn't unheard of for a guardian of childhood to hear a voice from another part of the world, if somebody thought it was extremely important for them to hear. Jack decided to follow this seemingly ubiquitous song, assuming it would lead him to his next destination — the next town where he could cover the ground with his ethereal snow, and put a smile on the face of a child or two. The last thing he had ever expected was to end up in a place where the ground was already covered with green grass and golden sand, where nature's beauty was still present in a frostless winter.

"That's odd." he said to himself as the song led him south, the atmosphere warming and the air thickening around him.

"That's very odd." Jack Frost declared with finality when at last he met up with the voice's owner, and saw that it was a small girl with dark hair and eyes, dressed in short shorts and a sweater that was much too big for her. He landed right behind her on the beach, where the girl was sitting on a rock, watching livid waves roll on and off the shore. Upon the girl's face was a look of wistful hope. Tucked under her arm was a book about Christmas, and Jack could tell from the cover as well as the scene that played out before him that the story put a great deal of emphasis on snow...

The first time he saw her he felt sick to his stomach — if a spirit, in fact, had one. What on earth could he do now? This child wanted snow. It was in his power to give her snow. But was it morally right? Snow didn't fall in the tropical regions of the world, and it was obviously for a reason, as Jack knew everything was for a reason. For it to be cold enough for rain to freeze in places like Antigua was against the laws of nature, and he had never before attempted to break the laws of nature. He felt if he were to give this child her Christmas wish, it would be impious and blasphemous, and could have disastrous results. But still it didn't sit right with him that a little girl was wishing for something that he could give her... and he was doing nothing about it.

If he could know this child's heart was not longing like it seemed to be; if he could see it was nothing more than a passing fancy she would soon give up on, it wouldn't be so hard to deny her, he thought. And that's why he kept going back to the same spot on the beach where he first saw her. Every night when he was finished his work, he would fly to her tiny island where it would still be daytime. Most days he would find her in the same place, padding along the shore, or sitting on the rocks as if she was waiting for something. A few times he thought she saw him, as she would look his way suddenly when he appeared. When she did this, there would be no indication in her face that she had seen another human being, however, so Jack supposed it was all in his imagination.

It was only natural that children in the Caribbean did not know about the spirit of the winter, and if they did not know about him, they could not believe in him, and if they didn't believe in him, they could not see him. Jack thanked his lucky stars that Cata could not see him. If she had called on him directly, it would have been all the more excruciating to watch her hopeful smile begin to wither and fade, and what had begun as childish whimsy take over her mind and being, as if the blissful spell the snow had cast over her had fed off her imagination, and was now a powerful curse, a demon set on consuming her entirely.

On the evening of December the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, Cata's mother tucked her in as usual. But she did not read the Santa book. The book had been taken away from Cata, just as the radio had been taken away to prevent her from hearing provoking songs, just as the television had not been turned on to prohibit her from watching holiday specials, with their unrealistic portrayals of a 'perfect, white Christmas'.

Just as the door had been locked, to disable her from going outside to search for snow.

It was practically Christmas. Christmas Eve was tomorrow. But Christmas wasn't going to come if there was no snow. Cata had to find snow, before it was too late. She had to find it for the sake of her brothers; for the sake of her mom and dad, and of the whole island. It was a chilly night, and Cata got out of bed and crept over to the window. It was open a crack, and the winds blew in. Instead of closing it, she opened it up wide and climbed out. In her nightgown she ambled to the beach in a daydream state. She had to find snow, she had to find snow, she had to find snow, she had to find snow... The winds whipped around her, blowing up the sand she walked, and the sky above her was choked with rain clouds, swollen as if about to burst. Then through the clouds came a beam of moonlight. It shone on the sea, causing it to glimmer and shine with an almost ethereal beauty. Like a bright white lure, it called to Cata. She ran to it.

When her parents found her three quarters of an hour later, she was rolling in the water, crying out with glee. "I found snow, Mama," she panted, trembling from rapture or freezing. She told them over and over she found it, and she loved the way it felt soft, and wet, and so pleasingly, numbingly cold.

Cata of the North would be spending Christmas in the psychiatric ward of the children's hospital this year. Through the window of her little room, the spirit of the winter watched her. Though the situation involved powers beyond his control, he couldn't help but feel he was responsible for this so cheerless holiday. There were many places where Jack Frost needed to be this Christmas Eve, but try as he may, he could not tear himself away from that hospital room window. He watched over the child as she muttered about snow in her drug-induced sleep. He knew there were children all over the Northern Hemisphere hoping for a white Christmas, but he would not be able to grant the wishes of all of them this year.

He would be letting a lot of kids down, but somehow he couldn't help but feel this was fair. Perhaps it wasn't right for some people to experience the joy of a white Christmas every year — just because of their location — and others to never see snow at all. Maybe this could be the start of a new custom for him. Maybe some towns in the north could have snow for Christmas, some could have it the week before, and some the week after... Maybe this would be fair.

Of course, there were still places where his magic could not reach. Even though he was a guardian of childhood, he was not like Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny, or the Sandman whose gifts could be shared with the entire world. His gift could only be given to roughly half: the northern half. His frosty magic was only known by the children of the north. Cata, Jack thought, was undoubtedly a child of the north. She lived in the wrong country, for certain. But that didn't mean she should see nothing but green Christmases and winter rain for the rest of her life.

That night, when the hospital was quiet, and the patients in the children's ward were all asleep, Cata awoke from her medicated slumber. She had been in and out of consciousness for the duration of the day, and each time she woke up she would wonder where she was, and what had transpired that she was now in this strange place, instead of the comfort of her own bed. This time she awoke, however, she knew exactly where she was. She was in a hospital on Christmas Eve. It was all coming back to her now. The long awaited and much anticipated holiday, her Santa storybook, and her quest to find snow... She never did find it, but she supposed she must have fallen ill while searching, and that was why she was in the hospital. She did feel quite a chill, and her muscles ached, and she realized her nose was running.

It was a terrible thing to be sick at Christmas. She didn't mind having a cold, but she wished she could be home with her family, on this day of all days. She thought her parents had been there during the day, but now it was night — she didn't know what time — and she was all alone. Santa may or may not come to her in the hospital, and the typical Antiguan December rain was falling outside her window, and seeming more sorrowful than ever.

She stared at it for a moment. The rain was falling slower than it usually did; more gently as if it was floating from the heavens, rather than falling out. The raindrops seemed bigger than normal, and visibly different in shape. Some were round and caught on the wind like flower petals, some were flaky like the scales of fish. They all looked soft, like sand from the beach, except they weren't gold; they were pure silver-lined white. Cata did a double take. She blinked. She rubbed her eyes and goggled, and then she gasped, and sprinted to the window.

There before Cata's dark eyes was the snow she had dreamed of for so long. It sparkled just like in her book, but a thousand times more beautiful. The window felt so icy cold it took her by surprise, and she swore she could smell snow's fresh, crisp scent, and taste the sugar of the snowflakes through the glass. The snow seemed to radiate a heavenly light, too perfect for this world. It enveloped her, filling her senses with its perfection. It seemed almost magic. Her eyes spilled over with joyful tears, as she laughed and danced around her tiny room.

In the morning there was no sign of snow ever falling in the Caribbean. There was nothing on the ground, and no other patients had seen it the night before except Cata. It seemed the wonderful spirit of the winter had come for a moment's visit, and then moved on. She told her parents about it, but they didn't believe her, and probably nobody ever would. No matter what people said to her, however — no matter what the children called her, or how many times the doctors told her it was a hallucination, a fever dream — the magic of the snow she saw that Christmas Eve would remain in her heart for the rest of her days. Throughout the years, she would always remember this year as the strangest, most extraordinary of Christmases, and every December the 24th she could still see Jack Frost smiling at her, even as winter rain continued to fall.


End file.
